Story-telling as a potent research paradigm for Indigenous communities

At first glance, it seems odd that a paper should be concerned with the place of storytelling in scientific studies when researchers such as ethnographers have long used this technique. However, the growth of knowledge generated through the extensively used classical research inquiries of qualitative and quantitative approaches has created a kind of mandarin and sheltered culture where anything that does not fall within these paradigms is received with skepticism, making it possible that indigenous ways of knowing, such as story-telling, be accepted feebly by the scientific communities. The argument presented in this paper is that to remove stories from empirically accepted research tools is to silence indigenous communities by depriving them of using a mode consistent with their culture and their ways of understanding the world they live in. Supporting this argument are discussions and examples focusing on aspects such as the nature and structure of stories; the social meaning of stories; potential benefits of using stories; methodological challenges in using story-telling as a research tool; the nature of story-telling and accompanying challenges of using new technologies such as photovoice. It is concluded that researchers who are skeptical about using story-telling are in danger of mimicking forces which have destroyed the cultures of many indigenous communities and silenced these communities with their strange and foreign ways of knowing. Using story-telling is a way of averting the use of mainstream theories that do not respect indigenous identity, culture, experiences and ways of knowing. Recommendations point to the need to bring together researchers and scholars whose current interest is in indigenous communities to discuss a number of issues including (i) story’s dependability, (ii) the relationship between the researcher and the narrator who claims to have the right to narrate, (iii) authorship of stories, and (iv) intelligibility. When issues such as these are still being considered, it is an indication that story-telling is still evolving into a potent research tool.